[Feature] Use compact, session-aware labels for extension tab groups #496

Feature request

Use compact, session-aware labels for browser extension tab groups, so users can identify which CLI task controls each group at a glance.

Environment

Observed locally with:

• @playwright/cli: 0.1.23
• Playwright browser extension: 0.5.0
• Google Chrome on macOS

Steps to reproduce

Attach using a named CLI session and open a page:

playwright-cli -s=docs-review attach --extension=chrome
playwright-cli -s=docs-review tab-new https://playwright.dev

Actual behavior and impact

The group title is based on the client identity, e.g. Playwright · playwright-cli, rather than docs-review. Connections with the same client identity receive numeric suffixes such as (2).

In my Chrome UI, the label was already truncated to Playwright · playwrig.... Most visible space is spent repeating product/client names, with nothing identifying the CLI task. Numeric suffixes and different colors distinguish connections visually, but do not map them to named CLI sessions.

This becomes especially confusing with concurrent tasks or agents. Simply appending the session name after the existing prefix would put the useful information at the end, where it may be truncated.

Requested behavior

• Prefer the session name alone, e.g. docs-review.
• If a product marker is needed, keep it short, e.g. PW|docs-review. Use | or a similarly compact separator with minimal spacing, rather than ·; the exact glyph is not essential.
• Alternatively, allow an explicit display label that can replace the complete group title without a mandatory product/client prefix.

The key requirement is to keep the task-specific identity visible in the limited tab-strip space, without manually renaming each group. The exact flag/API is up to maintainers; client identity does not need to be changed to provide a separate display label.

Source context

The same naming path is present in the upstream source inspected at commit df99adab7ff7:

• CLI daemon initializes clientName using guessClientName(), separately from sessionName.
• Browser factory passes clientInfo.clientName to the extension connection.
• Extension group naming constructs Playwright · <clientName> and adds numeric suffixes for collisions.

Runtime observations above are from the installed versions listed, not a runtime test of this upstream commit.